Stick Dancing
Breaking Koussevitsky's BSO Record
Seiji Ozawa 1935-2024
Listen to Tim Riley’s narration:
Time and the Master
(Boston Magazine, 1993)
This piece marked Ozawa’s 20th anniversary with the BSO in 1993, which otherwise might have passed unremarked.
The quote that leaps out at me now comes from a violinist, who requested anonymity: “He tries very hard with Mozart and Haydn… But he doesn’t know the meaning of the word elegant. He doesn’t have classical ideas about sound. Elegance and charm—he doesn’t know from that. That’s a terrible thing to say, and I feel bad saying it, because he hired me. It’s not like he’s not trying; he’s just barking up the wrong tree, looking for answers in the wrong places.” So note how that New York Times “essential recordings” list lacks core repertoire. I couldn’t get through his Brahms First and never tried the other three. The Haydn and Mozart escaped release. Beethoven, perhaps, gave him more to grab onto, but when people remarked on the Greatest Ozawa performances they’d say mention Schönberg, Bartok, or Stravinsky.
In so many ways he embodied that classic Boston dilemma of how the front office found itself opposing its own employees, like today’s Red Sox. As the envy of every other major orchestra publicity office, Ozawa sold a high percentage of season tickets, and audiences found him charming.
FOR THE FINAL program of his twentieth season last spring, Seiji Ozawa chose Mahler's Third Symphony, a piece so difficult that even Ozawa's mentor, Berlin's imperious Herbert von Karajan, had purposely avoided it. Ozawa was undaunted. At 57, the conductor still showed up for rehearsal in his white ducks and soft sandals, and he still led the Boston Symphony Orchestra with a mixture of politesse and intensity.
In some ways, the Mahler program epitomized the tensions of Ozawa's controversial two decades at the BSO's helm, a tenure marked by public acclaim, local critical ambivalence, and enough backstage intrigue to fill up several British tabloids. With a last-minute cancellation by mezzo-soprano soloist Birgitta Svendén, the Mahler rehearsals were anything but routine. To replace Svendén, three different soloists were hired, requiring last-minute scheduling changes.
Ozawa was not just closing the season, he was mounting one of the repertoire's most demanding pieces from memory and taking it to Carnegie Hall. On top of that, the accompanying recording sessions for this piece would complete the BSO's decade-long Mahler symphony cycle for the Philips label. At the end of a season marked by uneven playing and thorny contract maneuvers, the stakes could not have been higher.
Ozawa had only four rehearsals in which to reconquer the massive, 100-minute symphony. The rehearsal on Thursday morning, April 22, offered the last chance the BSO forces—more than a hundred strong—would have to play through the entire score. The orchestra seemed restless. Ozawa called out last-minute directions while the players ran through each movement. Each time the conductor stopped the piece to speak, his musicians fell into nervous chatter.
One player says that Ozawa's English is "as good as he wants it to be." The player recalls a particularly tense confrontation with the entire orchestra on the rotation issue last fall, during the BSO's tour of South America, when Ozawa defended his position in terrific English.
Ozawa proceeded aggressively. While the orchestra played, he announced the number of beats per bar he would be conducting in the difficult slow movement and demanded strict adherence to the tempi he had set in sections where the musicians tended to rush or slow down. Even at his most annoyed, he interrupted his players with only a brusque, "Excuse me, excuse me." Ozawa guided the orchestra through dozens of rhythmic snares and abrupt transitions while a digital clock above the percussionists quietly counted down.
That evening, in front of a packed house for the first of the six Mahler concerts, the BSO sounded like a different orchestra. With Ozawa conducting in front of a closed score, the frayed rehearsal atmosphere was replaced by triumphant music-making. Suddenly, this most difficult and searching of Mahler marathons rose to a level of beauty and mystery that had barely been hinted at during the rehearsals.
Instead of rambling on and on in a halfhearted run-through, the music floated by, one glorious section flowing into another, impelled by the kind of emotion that technique alone doesn't explain. The audience stood up. They roared. The critics lavished praise upon Ozawa for returning to form with such a huge, unruly piece of music.
At the end of Ozawa's twentieth season, the Mahler Third summed up his relationship with the BSO in ways all the backstage talk couldn't. Ozawa's Mahler was some of the best playing the orchestra had done all year—it ranked up there with its recent Mahler Ninth, which some cite as Ozawa's finest hour. It was the kind of musical peak that posed new questions for the conductor: Would Ozawa's musical growth ever match that of the orchestra he had by then largely appointed? Would he ever consistently make music as provocative as this Mahler performance? For that matter, why didn't his music-making consistently reflect more of his complex interaction with this orchestra?
As he begins his twenty-first year with the BSO, Ozawa holds the longest tenure of any music director of a major orchestra still conducting. While some other orchestras are breaking in new conductors (the New York Philharmonic, Kurt Masur; the Chicago Symphony, Daniel Barenboim), Boston is entering its third decade with Ozawa, whose stint with the BSO seems likely to surpass even Serge Koussevitzky's 25-year reign, from 1924 to 1949.
For many, though, Ozawa's tenure remains in the shadow of Koussevitzky's legacy, especially when it comes to commissions of contemporary works. Ozawa's two decades have been marked by an unusually high level of controversy and public bickering. Critics regularly assail his weakness in conducting key composers such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, and many say that he has not lived up to his early promise. The orchestra's management is accustomed to being on the defensive about its maestro, repeatedly calling Ozawa "one of the world's greatest conductors."
The front office recognizes that there is a problem but concedes only that Ozawa's international touring schedule and commitments to his native Japan often conflict with the best interests of the BSO…
more on Ozawa
Obituaries: James R. Oestreich in the New York Times, Barry Millington in the Guardian, Tim Page in the Washington Post, and Andrew Farach-Colton picks Ozawa’s greatest hits for Gramophone. Javier C. Hernández suggests 8 Essential Recordings for the New York Times.
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